Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 120

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 120

Canada

6/12/09 - Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada

We wake and take on another travel day.  I ask Sam if he is already tired of Canada and trying to hurry on.  He claims that the wildfire is hurrying us on and since Liard is a ‘hot spot’, we will have to forego staying there. We hope to make it to Watson Lake (the town) if we can.  No one seems to know the road conditions, or the fire conditions – so on we go.  We get close to Liard Hot Springs and see the turn off to the fire fighter’s camp.  There are no road signs or people directing traffic or people at all on the road.  We keep going.  There is extremely little traffic.  We pass by the turn to Liard and see patches of trees smoldering right there.  See it?  Right there! Practically on the road – and still not a person in sight.  We keep going. A truck passes us coming the other way. Good sign.  Between the Liard Hot Springs Lodge and a little this side of Fireside, we see several more smoldering areas where the trees look half burnt, but the smoke is coming from the ground.  I remember the natural gas – gas and oil – refineries and pumpers.  We go a tad faster.  We see a few spots where flames of fires are still lapping up the trees and brush.  We go on.  We make it through the fire area without seeing anyone who looks like they know or care about what is going on.  I believe that someone cared, even knew what was happening, but that the information was released on a ‘need to know’ basis – and we did not need to know.  We were past it. 

And Who Has The Right-Of-Way?

There was not a haze of smoke in the air, although the wildfire had been burning for at least a week.  We also expected to see more animals on the road area, fleeing the fire.  Mmmm maybe!  Rivers become attracted to the road and took turns escorting us. I have many pictures of the mountains and the cascading snow melts.  These look like a close relative to regular waterfalls, except there is always a snow bank acting as guardian. We pass a small hillside that meets the road and find several mountain sheep – one of which laughs at us as we pass.  Further down the road, a small grey SUV has stopped horn to ‘horn’ with a mountain goat.  He did not look too happy, but was unwilling to just walk away from the situation.  The goat didn’t look any happier.

Mineral Lick

We saw two caribou coming up to the side of the road from a small creek bed. They loitered at the side of the road ‘licking’ the gravel/dirt. While we were watching, traffic came by three times, startling them back into the creek bed. They kept returning to their lick spot, led by the male. We had read one of the roadside information panels that informed us that several animals will travel to areas for natural mineral licks.  I knew of salt licks, but not mineral licks. A little further down the road, we saw another black bear, munching on dandelions. Sam got the best picture showing the bear relishing his salad greens – and yellows.  And we were not done yet. 

More This Way!

Side Tracked Again

Teslin Lake, a very large lake, lapped up to within about a foot of the roadbed for many, many miles. Once past it, another black bear popped into view, this time with adorable twin, playful cubs. We watched and took pictures for at least twenty minutes. We thought that surely the show was over.  We were wrong. We saw three big bison come into view.  They were all bulls, all with straight hair on top and all lying down when we saw them.  They were totally impervious to us. Barely making the effort to tail-swipe flies off of their own flanks. Busy day!

Eh?

We made it to Watson Lake (the town) and tried to find a place to stay.  We were not impressed and decided to move on a ways down the road to a provincial campground right on the Lake called Watson Lake.  The road into the campground was very narrow. The milepost book said it was OK, so we went. We made it and the park facilities were great.  The only thing is – the mosquitoes were swarming and they were especially swarming for Sam.  I helped spray Sam with bug killer and the area with original Listerine.  That actually helped, but we stayed indoors as much as possible.  I did get a picture of my trophy.  We probably won’t come here again – if we can help it.

Best Trophy Ever!!!